In recent years, automatic bread making machines have become increasingly popular. These machines make bread without requiring a user to expend the time and effort associated with mixing, repeated kneading, and baking. Typically, a user pours the bread making ingredients into the machine, and presses a few selected control buttons. The machine includes electronic control circuitry that controls the operation of a motor and heating element. By selecting a desired program, the user may leave the machine to mix the ingredients, knead the dough, allow the dough to rise, and bake the dough, resulting in a baked loaf of bread.
At times, however, the user may desire the end, baked product to be in a form other than a single loaf of bread. For example, the user may wish to make rolls, baguettes, bagels, etc. In this situation, a user may place the ingredients into the chamber of the automatic bread making machine, and select a program that simply mixes and kneads the dough, but does not bake it. The user then removes the dough from the machine, divides it and forms it into the desired shapes, and bakes the individual portions of dough in a conventional oven.
It would be advantageous to bake individually formed portions of dough in an automatic bread making machine. However, this is not possible with currently available machines, given that these machines provide only a single, unitary baking chamber. The present invention provides this and other advantages, as will be apparent from the following detailed description and accompanying figures.